Good Article on NBA.com about the Lottery.
Minnesota has BRUTAL luck. I never realized!!

A month after doing his part to save pro basketball in Sacramento, Mayor Kevin Johnson is coming back east in hopes of helping the Kings find a savior.

And the Minnesota Timberwolves, perennial lottery losers, have the best odds of finally claiming that elusive No. 1.

The NBA holds its draft lottery Tuesday in Secaucus, N.J., with a lucky team earning the right to make the first pick in next month's draft.

The Timberwolves have a 25 percent chance of winning, thanks to their league-worst 17-65 record. But they shouldn't design a jersey with the name of Duke's Kyrie Irving, Arizona's Derrick Williams or whichever other player they would consider with the top pick just yet.

The Wolves have gone backward seven times and stayed put the other six in their 13 previous lottery opportunities, falling to the No. 4 pick last year despite entering with the second-best odds of winning. In their only other chance from the pole position, they took a costly two-spot dive in 1992, missing out on Shaquille O'Neal and settling for Christian Laettner.

And the lottery has been no help at all lately to the teams that need it most. Not since 2004, when Orlando won and grabbed Dwight Howard, has the team with the worst record landed the top pick.

Cleveland won the year before and selected James, who led the Cavaliers to their greatest success. But he bolted for Miami last summer and Cavs tumbled from a 60-win team to the worst in the Eastern Conference with a 19-63 record.

They have a 19.9 percent chance of winning with their own pick, plus a 2.8 percent chance of turning a pick owed them by the Los Angeles Clippers from the Baron Davis trade into the No. 1 selection. Cavs owner Dan Gilbert's team will be represented on stage by his 14-year-old son, Nick, who was born with Neurofibromatosis (NF), a nerve disorder that causes tumors to grow anywhere in the body.

The Kings have lost ground in the lottery two years in a row but could have a winner in Johnson, who led the drive to keep them in Sacramento at least one more season. He came to New York last month and impressed NBA owners with a pitch that highlighted millions of dollars in sponsorship commitments, and team owners Joe and Gavin Maloof decided not to file for relocation to Anaheim.

Johnson said he was honored when the Maloofs asked him to represent the Kings. He took it as a sign of goodwill that the city and team can work together to finance a new arena.

"I'm going to negotiate with the Maloofs that if we get the No. 1 pick, then they're going to have to sign me to a 10-day contract so I can wear a Kings uniform," he said. "That's my price of admission on this."

The 14 teams that missed the playoffs are in the lottery. The lottery sets the top three picks, with the next 11 spots being determined in inverse order of a team's record. So the Wolves can do no worse than No. 4.

Hey guys, do the math before complaining. The Raptors have a 47% chance of landing a top 3 pick while only a 22.6% chance of landing a 4th pick and 26.5% chance of landing a 5th pick. And it's pretty much a 50/50 split between staying in the top 3 or dropping slightly. Sounds pretty fair and worth the fact that it prevents teams from being rewarded for tanking. Brush up on your alegebraic formulas and you'll see that this is a pretty sophisticated and smart system.

To determine the winner, fourteen ping pong balls numbered 1–14 are placed in a standard lottery machine and four balls are randomly selected from the lot. Just as in most traditional lotteries, the order in which the numbers are drawn is not important. That is, 1-2-3-4 is considered to be the same as 4-3-2-1. So although there is a total of 24 (4!) orders in which the balls numbered 1-2-3-4 can be picked, they are all treated as the same outcome. In doing this, the permutation of 4 balls from 14 becomes the combination of 4 balls from 14. That is, the total of 24,024 (14! / 10!, or 14x13x12x11) possible permutations is reduced by a factor of 24, to 1,001 combinations (or 14! / (10! x 4!)). Of these, 1 outcome is disregarded and 1,000 outcomes are distributed among the 14 non-playoff NBA teams. The combination 11-12-13-14 (in any order that those numbers are drawn) is not assigned and it is ignored if drawn; this has never occurred in practice.

Then:

The lottery is conducted with witnesses verifying that all 14 balls are represented once as they are placed in the lottery machine. The balls are placed in the machine for 20 seconds to randomize prior to having the first ball drawn. The remaining three balls are drawn at 10-second intervals. NBA officials determine which team holds the winning combination and that franchise is awarded the #1 overall draft pick. The four balls are returned to the machine and the process is repeated to determine the second and third picks.

Are the teams made aware beforehand of what combinations they've been assigned, or does it really just come down to "NBA officials" determining who gets the winning combination?

If the Raps get the 1st or 2nd pick, wow........wow.....wow.......would definitely help with the rebuild moving forward.....count me in on a nice alternate black Irving or D Williams jersey lol

The other possibility with the #1 or #2 is moving it. Assuming enough other teams think this is a 2 player draft (Williams and Irving) and you think it's a 5 player draft, you'd be able to move down to 3, 4 or 5 and get the guy you want plus a decent extra asset, which might be better for Toronto long-term.

The other possibility with the #1 or #2 is moving it. Assuming enough other teams think this is a 2 player draft (Williams and Irving) and you think it's a 5 player draft, you'd be able to move down to 3, 4 or 5 and get the guy you want plus a decent extra asset, which might be better for Toronto long-term.

I HATE trading down. The majority of the time you just end up with a worse player. Ask Portland if they would trade their 3rd pick for the 6th pick again. Unless they were happy with Martell Webster or Deron Williams.

My opinion on this draft is that it really doesn't matter where the Raps pick, so long as it's top 3. Irving, Williams and Kanter are basically equal in my book, and the drafting of any of them = draft success.

Best case scenario? Toronto drafts 1st or 2nd, with SAC picking third. I believe in this case, with both Irving and Williams off the board, that it's possible that SACs pick could be had by trading them Bargnani. If such a trade doesn't go down, no harm done, and the Raps still draft 1 or 2.

Now. On to more exciting things. I'm going to repost some part of a bit I posted a few months back concerning lottery odds. The thread can be found here (along with a more detailed explanation):

The following is alternate view of looking at who is most likely to draft where. The argument for such a view: looking at positional odds versus team odds. Basically, you don't look at the 3rd worst team, see that they have the highest odds at the 5th spot. You look at the 5th spot, and see who has the highest odds. For example. Because the highest odds for the 4th spot go to the worst team, the 4th spot is predicted to fall to Minnesota. Who has highest odds for 5th? The fourth worst team. Who has highest odds for 2nd overall? Well, actually, the Raps, and here's why: while their odds are higher for 4th and 5th, other teams have even greater odds than the Raps at those spots, thereby precluding Toronto from landing there. The next highest, then, is 2nd overall. How does it all shake down?

The following is the "J-Hoss Official Lottery Prediction."

the worst team would draft 4th;
the second worst team would draft 1st;the 3rd worst would draft 2nd;
the 4th worst would draft 5th;the 5th worst would draft 3rd;
the 6th worst would draft 6th;
the 7th worst would draft 7th;
And so on down the rest of the list according to their position.

It just so happens that the 3rd worst are the Raps - who will draft 2nd, and the 5th worst are the Kings, who will draft 3rd. Therefore, the JOLP falls in line with my articulated best-case scenario. What a coincidence.

I HATE trading down. The majority of the time you just end up with a worse player. Ask Portland if they would trade their 3rd pick for the 6th pick again. Unless they were happy with Martell Webster or Deron Williams.

I wouldn't advocate trading down in the NBA draft as a general rule but in a year where there is no clear franchise-changer and there are serious questions about all of the picks you have to try and maximize value and maybe the best way to do that with the #1 pick is to end up with Kanter at #3 and another asset. Also, looking at Toronto's current situation where they need 5 or 6 "top 8" players, if you could get two of those guys instead of one, well, why not?